Comments on: Protect the children: keep porn legal

By: P. Drano

P. Drano — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:10:35 +0000

Terry Rist:
But think of the campaign you could have: Teen Pornstars Against Drunk Drivers. Or maybe an exciting movie.

By: Terry Rist

Terry Rist — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 02:45:11 +0000

You have to be 18 to take part in porn but have to wait until you are 21 to drink alcohol ? Strange Country.

By: The Monjo Blog

The Monjo Blog — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:39:33 +0000

Comments I make on other sites X

The tenth edition of my other blogging commentary is going to be a bumper issue. It kicks off with a rare occurrence – me praising someone: Outer Life, to be precise:

By: Monjo

Monjo — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:22:16 +0000

Child pornography is really very small and the fanfare over paedophilia disguises just how minute a problem is actually is in our society. The huge media attention it receives and its massive focus fools us into labelling all men as paedophiles in the same way the 1970s feminists made many women believe all men are rapists.

By: Dearest

Dearest — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:03:34 +0000

I’m confused by the mixed attitude here as to who is being protected. Many of you wish to protect the public from itself, but seem quite happy to view porn in your own homes, as if a ‘responsible audience’ can be distinguished from an irresponsible one. This paternalist, old-Liberal new-liberal hybrid puts me unpleasantly in mind of Asquith suffocated to death with his own fetish equipment.

Clearly, you must accept porn as morally sound at its most basic level, if you accept it under any circumstance at all. The hardest questions reside on the peripheries: what harm can it do to those who don’t chose to view it?

This harm falls into two categories: that which apparantly depraves society and the minds of our men, who then rape women, harm children and comit other deeds they see performed without compunction on a gross home video. This qualm can be dismissed with little effort: the human condition finds us depraved enough already to rape, without watching it first. (original sin: it’s all Eve’s fault. We women obviously deserve what we get). Psychopaths are mentally deficient; they lack – and porn does not remove, it adds.

Possibly the greatest and only harm, then, is done to children tortured as a direct, undeniable result of demand and a correlatedly increasing supply of kiddie porn. John, I agree: publishing the participants’ names etc is not the way to diminish this cycle. But it is neither redundant, nor too late to try and restrict production of and access to what most of us see as an evil.

By: Blimpish

Blimpish — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:52:11 +0000

One day I’ll grow up, but the Carry On opportunities here are immense. “Crack industry.” “Quickly breaks down at the bottom.” Titter ye not.

J: No power disparities associated with porn? You’re using the wrong stuff.

By: Guy Herbert

Guy Herbert — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:49:19 +0000

“One of New Labour’s more creditable achievements…” Except they didn’t legalise it. It’s a bit of common law flexibility. The courts and prosecutors and the BBFC decided they had better things to do. And those changes were well under way–as the evidence that unrestrained internet porn had completely failed to destroy society as we know it accrued–before 1997. I attended a public consultation by the BBFC in 1995 at which they made it pretty clear they were looking for the green light to take a soft line on hardcore.

The letter of the law on indecency and obscenity remains pretty much the same, and has recently been severely tightened in a number of ways by the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

By: Jarndyce

Jarndyce — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:41:10 +0000

John / Blimpish: there’s a big difference with employment regulation. The issue here is power disparity that the state is (in theory) seeking to re-balance. And the voluntary/involuntary contract you introduce quickly breaks down at the bottom, when your benefit has been removed and it’s work or starve.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:06:30 +0000

And the first inaugural Sharpener award for best put-down ever goes to…

Drumroll, please…

John Band, for ‘you certainly sound like a wanker.’

Sterling work, sir.

By: John B

John B — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:59:10 +0000

Bob – US porn producers who use under-18 models are already at risk of serious prison time. As I argue above, this is enough of a deterrent on its own; the new measures will do nothing to protect girls from porn.

SSM – I’m unsurprised by your story: you certainly sound like a wanker.

Blimpish – you have a point re employment laws; I’ll need to think about that one (hell, it may even inspire a new article). In terms of the 1st Amendment, -this- legislation is merely procedural, but Gonzales’s generalised War on Porn is not.

Inkling – I’d be entirely up for that deal, as long as the newly-offshored crack industry was still able to target its existing US customers.